A place to write about things I see from where I'm standing (wherever that may be).

At the Hadrian Hotel

Monday, November 28, 2005

Love Your Smoke Detector

Prior to 24 November 2005, the only time I ever heard anything from any of my smoke detectors was when their batteries were running low and needed to be replaced. All of that changed after our Thanksgiving dinner this year.

To quote Arlo Guthrie, we had "a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat" and then spread through the house to do various different things. The kids were watching TV with their grandfather, my wife was helping my mom with some web-shopping, and I was showing my mother-in-law how to use some of the features of her new digital camera.

About 10 minutes into my camera tutorial, one of our smoke detectors went off. Neither seeing nor smelling smoke, I walked over to the detector to check it out. When I got there, I was shocked to see 1- foot high flames dancing on my dining room table. Yikes! I yelled "FIRE!" and ran to the table to try to put it out.

A few napkins had been tossed on the table and had landed too close to a "tea candle." While not covering the candle, apparently part of a napkin was close enough to catch fire. When I got to the table, I started smothering the flames using un-burnt napkin and table cloth while my 14-year-old son ran in and doused the pile of cloth with some water. The combined effort quickly put out the flames.

If the smoke detector had not gone off, the fire could have easily spread over the rest of the table cloth and onto the rug under the table. At that point, our only option would have been to leave the house and call 911 (in that order!).

As a reward for its selfless devotion to my safety, I'm going to give my smoke detector and its brethren new batteries. I love my smoke detector(s)....